The present invention relates to the field of content previewing and, more particularly, to real-time preview of uniform resource identifier addressable dynamic content.
A commonly used approach for creating thumbnail previews for Web-based content (e.g., Web pages) relies on many complex stages. The approach typically involves fetching the content, generating a preview image of the content, optionally compressing the image, storing the image to persistent store for future retrieval, and retrieving the content upon request. Sophisticated software components and/or solutions are required for each stage specified above. This complexity leads to significant computing resource overhead. Additionally, the preview can become outdated as content changes, a common occurrence with dynamically generated content. Usually, elaborate algorithms and arrangements are required to take care of this requirement of keeping the preview updated to reflect the latest changes of content. The preview (e.g., thumbnail) creation process also causes heavy load on the servers, which complicates with multiple clients trying to connect for obtaining the thumbnails.
One clear example where traditional previews fail to compensate for the dynamic nature of Web-based content is apparent in Rich Internet Applications which utilize dynamic technologies such as JavaScript, and MACROMEDIA FLASH. Typical examples of such content are Web 2.0 content and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) type environments which can include widgets and portlets. Technologies utilized in these environments can add considerable complexities to the preview generation process. Since these technologies are dynamic which can constantly change during presentation and the preview generated is static (e.g., a snapshot in time), content which employ these technologies cannot be properly previewed. Most solutions make snapshot previews of topmost or indexed page only. While, useful for many scenarios, it assumes special significance of the content for which a preview is being generated. SaaS environments often require a preview for multiple states of pages/content which can sometimes be critical to decision-makers. As such, a new approach to account for the dynamic nature of Web-content is needed.